


a candle blowing in a storm

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s03e05 4722 Hours, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5106785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have more to offer each other than hope and protection--which is fortunate, since Jemma's hope doesn't last forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a candle blowing in a storm

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to my [Will and Jemma as soulmates drabble](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/post/132161705292/ooh-could-i-suggest-jemmawill-soulmate-trope) on tumblr, but you shouldn't have to read that to understand this. You also don't need to be a biospecialist shipper; all of the Grant/Jemma is wholly past in nature.
> 
> Title is from Concrete Blonde's _Sun_. Thanks for reading!

Hope isn’t the only thing Jemma has to offer Will, just as protection isn’t the only thing he has to offer her.

The bond builds between them, solid and strong, and it smooths over the cracks in both of them—the fractures his fourteen years of isolation have put in Will’s mind and the gaping wounds her other, much less worthy soulmate left on Jemma’s heart. It binds them together: a constant, warming reassurance that gives them the strength to leave one another's sides, even briefly, and eases their troubled sleep.

The bond can’t truly sustain them—it’s no substitute for food or water—but it _feels_ as though it can. Jemma’s hope leaks through to Will, lightening the shadows in his eyes, as his practicality tethers her, reminding her that some problems, if not unsolvable, can take centuries to puzzle out. He doesn’t _dampen_ her faith in Fitz so much as introduce an element of reason to it, and it helps.

Without Will to temper her wild faith, she’s positive she would have shattered along with the bottle that failed to carry their message home.

As it is, she doesn’t escape unscathed.

All of the worst case scenarios she deliberately refused to contemplate build up in her head on the way back to their tunnels. It’s a miracle she even makes it that far; as soon as they’re inside, she falls apart, collapsing in on herself as she finally accepts what Will told her months ago.

This is hell.

He was right, so early on, when he said hope was pointless. She was wrong to hope—wrong to force _him_ to hope, to put aside what he learned long before she set foot on this horrible, horrible rock. She's only hurt them both.

There’s no hope on this planet.

She’s resisted any truly intimate contact thus far—which Will, bless him, hasn’t complained about at all, despite how long he’s been alone—but what’s the point? All of her reasons, her fanciful ideas about home and the perfect moment and their future, seem ridiculous. All they have—all they’ll _ever_ have—is each other.

So she falls into him, and Will does her the courtesy of questioning it only once.

“You’re sure?” he asks, rough hands warm on her hips. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”

“ _You’re_ what I want,” she counters, and that’s enough.

It has to be enough.

The sex between them isn’t what she expected it to be. Oh, he’s desperate, certainly, and no surprise, but he’s also…worshipful, almost. He calls her his hope, his sunlight—endearments that would be poetic or trite on Earth turned raw and _real_ here in this hell—and while he kisses her soulmark fondly, he doesn’t pay it any more attention than he does every other inch of her skin. His hands are gentle as they skim over her curves, every brush of his fingers light enough to leave goosebumps.

There’s such _wonder_ in the way he touches her, and it brings tears to her eyes just as surely as the scars littering his skin do.

“Will,” she says, “my Will,” and kisses every scar and bruise while his fingers twine in her hair.

By the end of it, she knows every inch of his skin—and he knows every inch of hers.

Which introduces a problem.

Jemma’s words are the only ones Will bears, but the reverse isn’t true. She has two soulmarks, his wrapped around her bicep and one other, slashing across her ribs like an unsightly scar of her own. And as they curl together in front of the fire, breathless and spent, Will’s fingers press against that scar in a silent question.

She tips her head back to look at him, and is relieved to find no anger in his eyes, simply curiosity. It’s a nice change; Grant always hated her other mark— _Will’s_ mark. Even before he revealed himself for a murderous traitor, his jealousy was clear in the way he touched Will’s words.

Here and now, Will’s curiosity turns to worry as her silence draws out.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says.

“No,” she says. “No, it’s all right.” She resettles herself against him, greedy for the warmth of his skin as memory chills hers. “I have another soulmate, as you can see. Things…didn’t work out.”

He rubs a strong hand down her back, easing away a little of the tension in her spine.

“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely, accepting her evasion, and she knows he’ll let her leave it there.

She _means_ to leave it there—leave _Grant_ there, in the past where he belongs—but the words bubble up in her throat and escape before she can stop them.

“He’s a murderer,” she says, and Will goes still. And now she _can’t_ leave it—she knows he thinks himself a murderer, blames himself for the deaths of the scientists who came here with him, and she can’t bear the thought that he might compare himself to Grant.

He needs to know the truth, as little as she wants to share it.

So she rushes on, “He kills people—innocent, defenseless people. And not to protect himself or others. He does it because he wants to, because he _likes_ it, and I—”

“Hey, hey,” Will says, hugging her close, and she’s resigned, though not surprised, to realize that she’s crying. “Jemma—”

“He nearly killed Fitz,” she tells him, voice breaking on her best friend’s name, and Will only holds her closer.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says again, but she _does_.

She has to tell him, because there’s no one else to say it. She can’t pass the job along, let the others share the truth in whispers while her back is turned, the way they did with Mack and Hunter and Bobbi. They’re _never going home_ ; no one else will ever be able to tell him for her.

And she can’t pretend it never happened, not here—not when all they have, aside from each other, are memories.

He deserves to know, doesn’t he? He shared the worst parts of himself with her in the very first week, when he told her about his years here and what happened to the scientists. He’s shared his _everything_ with her—his home, his life, his _soul_ —and it’s not fair to hold this back.

As much as she hates to admit it, Grant is still a part of her. She owes it to Will to let him see that part, too.

Maybe she says so, or maybe it’s just that Will has learnt the way she thinks. Either way, as she searches for words, he makes a frustrated noise and pulls her onto him, letting gravity do the work of pressing skin to skin while he buries his hands in her hair to meet and hold her eyes.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, slowly and clearly. “If you wanna tell me, tell me. I’ll listen. But please don’t do it for me.”

And that—

That is so precisely what she didn’t even realize she needed to hear that she almost can’t believe it.

“But don’t you want to know?” she asks, more tearily than she'd like.

“Sure,” he says readily. “This guy hurt you? Of _course_ I wanna know about it.” He rubs his thumbs over her cheeks, and something about his eyes makes her think of before, of him calling her his sunlight. “But not if it hurts you to say it.”

“I—oh,” Jemma breathes.

There’s something sharp in her throat that makes it impossible to speak; all she can do is lean down and kiss him. She tries to pour everything into it—her gratitude, her love, her apology—and whether or not she succeeds, Will’s easy acceptance of it (of _everything_ ) warms a part of her she hadn’t even known was cold.

Grant left more scars than she’s truly consciously aware of, it seems. It’s astonishing, really, that she survived him at all.

And yet here she is, safe—despite all odds—in the arms of a man who _asks_ her not to hurt herself on his behalf. Who makes no demands, only offers. Who looks at her like—like—

Like sunlight on a sunless planet.

Perhaps she wasn’t wrong to have hope, after all. Perhaps she was merely wrong in what she was hoping _for_.

This isn’t home. This planet, these tunnels—they’ll never be home.

But Will can be, if she lets him. He kisses her like he wants to be—like he already is.

And that…that’s not nothing.

It will be enough. They'll  _make_ it enough.


End file.
